First Congregational Church of Kittery Point, United Church of Christ March 7, 2010
Sermon—“Paradise. Today.”—Rev. Jeffrey M. Gallagher, Pastor
Lent III; Based on: John 12:1-8 & Luke 23:39-43
There is a wonderful little book, produced by Pilgrim Press—the publishing arm of the United Church of Christ—that I, unfortunately, have had to recommend to quite a few people lately. I say unfortunately because the book, although beautifully written, is all about explaining death to young children. It’s by Doris Stickney and is entitled Water Bugs & Dragonflies. Given that it’s short, I’d like to share it with you, in its entirety, now.
“Down below the surface of a quiet pond lived a little colony of water bugs. They were a happy colony, living far away from the sun. For many months they were very busy, scurrying over the soft mud on the bottom of the pond.
They did notice that every once in a while one of their colony seemed to lose interest in going about with friends. Clinging to the stem of a pond lily, it gradually moved out of sight and was seen no more.
“Look!” said one of the water bugs to another. “One of our colony is climbing up the lily stalk. Where do you suppose she is going?”
Up, up, up it went slowly. Even as they watched, the water bug disappeared from sight. Its friends waited and waited but it didn’t return.
“That’s funny!” said one water bug to another. “Wasn’t she happy here?” asked a second water bug. “Where do you suppose she went?” wondered a third. No one had an answer. They were greatly puzzled.
Finally, one of the water bugs, a leader in the colony, gathered its friends together. “I have an idea. The next one of us who climbs up the lily stalk must promise to come back and tell us where he or she went and why.” “We promise,” they said solemnly.
One spring day, not long after, the very water bug who had suggested the plan found himself climbing up the lily stalk. Up, up, up he went. Before he knew what was happening, he had broken through the surface of the water, and fallen onto the broad, green lily pad above.
When he awoke, he looked about with surprise. He couldn’t believe what he saw. A startling change had come to his old body. His movement revealed four silver wings and a long tail. Even as he struggled, he felt an impulse to move his wings. The warmth of the sun soon dried the moisture from his new body. He moved his wings again and suddenly found himself up above the water. He had become a dragonfly.
Swooping and dipping in great curves, he flew through the air. He felt exhilarated in the new atmosphere. By and by, the new dragonfly lighted happily on a lily pad to rest. Then it was that he chanced to look below to the bottom of the pond. Why, he was right above his old friends, the water bugs! There they were, scurrying about, just as he had been doing some time before.
Then the dragonfly remembered the promise: “The next one of us who climbs up the lily stalk will come back and tell where he or she went and why.” Without thinking, the dragonfly darted down. He hit the surface of the water and bounced away. Now that he was a dragonfly, he could no longer get into the water.
“I can’t return!” he said in dismay. “At least I tried, but I can’t keep my promise. Even if I could go back, not one of the water bugs would know me in my new body. I guess I’ll just have to wait until they become dragonflies, too. Then they’ll understand what happened to me, and where I went.”
And the dragonfly winged off happily into its wonderful new world of sun and air.”[1]
It’s a wonderful story, isn’t it? A wonderful explanation of the mystery that is death. And, you know, I think helpful for us as adults, too. Because even though we may think we understand more about death than our children, we really don’t. We can just talk about it in fancier terms. We know God’s promises—that the end of our earthly life is the beginning of a new life—but we don’t really know the details of what that means or looks like.
Is it streets of gold with harp-playing angels? Is it a big reunion with all those who have gone before us? Is it a vast assortment of our favorite things on earth—pizza and ice cream galore, maybe—in unlimited supply? Is it simply a different state of consciousness—without body? Or is it some kind of Paradise?
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Those are the words that Jesus speaks to one of the criminals being crucified beside him—his second “word” from the cross. “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Now, given that Jesus, and those two criminals, are about to die, are we not to take Jesus’ words as a prediction of the afterlife to come? Well, let’s take a closer look at this text and see if that’s what this is all about.
So today’s “word” follows directly on the heels of the word we focused on two weeks ago. After hearing derisive slurs from all those watching him be crucified, Jesus forgives all those who have conspired to take his life, before engaging in this back and forth with two criminals on either side of him. Now, a word needs to be said about these two. Crucifixion was not a means of death given to common criminals or thieves. Thus, it is likely that either thief could be better described as “a “troublemaker,” a “rabble-rouser,” perhaps an “insurrectionist,” maybe more accurately, a “terrorist”.”[2]
So this is Jesus, again, conversing with those who would have been on the far fringes of society. The first man, as you might recall, continues to hurl slurs at Jesus—claiming that if he was God’s Messiah, then he’d save all three of them. The second, however, says something quite different. Instead of piling on with the insults, this man recognizes that he deserves what he is getting, understands that Jesus does not, and then prays the words: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” It’s a curious phrase, so what does he mean by this?
Well, I take it as a faith statement. This man has obviously had a change of heart, and has come to “believe that, contrary to appearance, [Jesus’ death] is not a failure.”[3] In other words, unlike many who could not understand how the Messiah could come to earth and die—and thus began to have their doubts about Jesus as he hung on the cross—this man has faith that Jesus is the one who he says he is, and that God is still in charge. It is a dramatic, and powerful, testimony of this man’s newly found faith.
And Jesus’ response is interesting, isn’t it? “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” Paradise. Again, we wonder what he means by that. Heaven? Eternal life? Well, “Paradise is [actually] a Persian word meaning a walled garden. When a Persian king wished to do one of his subjects a very special honor he made him a companion of the garden which meant he was chosen to walk in the garden with the king.”[4]
Clearly such a word, with this connotation, would evoke images of the Garden of Eden—that perfect paradise from which, as the story goes, Adam and Eve were banished. However, as time went on, “The concept of paradise evolved so that it symbolized streams flowing with crystal-clear and healthful water, and trees blooming constantly beside multicolored flowers. There is no sickness in this blessed place, and the temperature is always ideal for humans.”[5] In short, it evolved into what we might call the realm of dragonflies, or heaven.
And so, even though we might “find [Jesus’] words too enigmatic”[6] for our taste—since, Jesus gives no more information as to what this Paradise might actually be like—I would guess that we have an inkling of what Jesus is getting at here. Later that day, when Jesus and the criminal die, they will be together in this realm of Paradise. Or is that what he’s actually saying?
The reason I ask this is because of that word today. For one author suggests that Jesus’ word here is “the last of the emphatic “today” pronouncements in [the gospel of] Luke.”[7] Remembering the time when Jesus preached in Nazareth and said that today the scripture was fulfilled in their hearing; and remembering the time when Jesus said to Zacchaeus, a man who found his faith, that salvation had come to him today, the author is suggesting that Paradise may actually start the moment Jesus offers those words.
Just listen to how another author expands on this idea: “when Jesus speaks of “Paradise,” he is not talking so much of a place where they may go someday, as a relationship that they entered today . . . Paradise is whenever, wherever you are with Jesus. Now to be sure, we Christians expect that that relationship will be deeper, richer and more full once we have passed beyond the frustrations and limitations of this present mortal life. But that does not mean that that relationship does not begin here, now. Our practice of the Christian faith is our preparation for paradise . . . The eternal, complete relationship begins here, even if not in its fullness, now.”[8]
It’s a powerful point, isn’t it? It’s Jesus saying: “yes, what’s to come is important—eternal life and all that—but don’t neglect the relationship that you and I can have right now!” And is that not what our other text, from John, gets at?
For in that text, Jesus is preparing for his final journey into Jerusalem, and so he dines with his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. After dinner Mary takes out a bottle of costly perfume—perhaps costing a year’s worth of wages—and uses the entire bottle to anoint Jesus’ feet. It’s an extravagantly generous act to which Judas—in John’s version of the story—objects, citing that the money could have been given to the poor (or at least used to line Judas’ pockets).
And what’s Jesus’ response? He praises Mary, because he knows that she is simply anointing him for his burial while he is still with them. In other words, Jesus “declares that [her action] is appropriate in that moment, particularly in light of his impending death.”[9] It’s a faith statement that Mary has made, through her actions, which reveals that their relationship, their Paradise, has begun, today.
And so I hope you can hear what these texts are saying. They’re not saying that we shouldn’t focus on the afterlife—the promise that we stand witness to God’s love, even as this earthly life ends—but they are saying that if we’re constantly looking ahead, we may miss the fact that we can start that Paradise, more deeply develop that relationship with God and Jesus, right here on earth, today—so that what happens in the next life is just a continuation of what was begun in this life.
And that’s a relationship that is available—to deepen or to start anew—today, or any day—even up until we breathe our last breath, as the conversion of that thief, on death’s doorstep, shows us.
But, just in case we’re still wondering what that Paradise to come—which what we find here on earth might be a precursor to—is like, I’m going to leave you with a poem by secular poet Mark Strand. This is his reflection on Jesus’ second word from the cross from his “Poem After the Seven Last Words.”
“There is an island in the dark, a dreamt-of place
where the muttering wind shifts over the white lawns
and riffles the leaves of trees, the high trees
that are streaked with gold and line the walkways there;
and those already arrived are happy to be the silken
remains of something they were but cannot recall;
they move to the sound of stars, which is also imagined,
but who cares about that; the polished columns they see
may be no more than shafts of sunlight, but for those
who live on and on in the radiance of their remains
this is of little importance. There is an island
in the dark and you will be there, I promise you, you
shall be with me in paradise, in the single season of being,
in the place of forever, you shall find yourself. And there
the leaves will turn and never fall, there the wind
will sing and be your voice as if for the first time.”[10]
Paradise. Today. Keep an eye out for dragonflies. Amen.
© 2010 by Rev. Jeffrey M. Gallagher, All Rights Reserved.
[1] Doris Stickney, Water Bugs & Dragonflies (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2004).
[2] William H. Willimon, Thank God It’s Friday, Encountering the Seven Last Words from the Cross (Nashville: Abingdon, 2006), p.19.
[3] Stephen I. Wright, “Christ the King, Year C,” in The Lectionary Commentary, The Third Readings: The Gospels Ed. Roger E. Van Harn, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2001), 455-458, p.458.
[4] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series, The Gospel of Luke (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1975), p.287.
[5] James H. Charlesworth, “Paradise,” in The New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, Me-R, Volume 4 Ed. Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, (Nashville: Abingdon, 2009), 377-378, p.377.
[6] Stanley Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2004), p.37.
[7] R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX Ed. Leander E. Keck, (Nashville: Abingdon, 1995), 1-490, p.458.
[8] Willimon, p.20.
[9] David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, eds., Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 2, Lent through Eastertide (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), p.142.
[10] Mark Strand, “Poem After the Seven Last Words, Part 2,” in Man and Camel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), p.44.
